Rebecca Polk

Older adults report higher levels of emotional well-being in cross-sectional studies. Despite assertions that older adults are better at regulating emotions, studies investigating emotion regulation (ER) strategies have not found consistent age differences. Instead, we propose a new framework on ER in aging focusing instead on ER tactics (how ER behavior is implemented in specific situations): the age-related Adaptive Positive Tactic (APT) shift hypothesis. Older adults report relatively greater use of positive-approaching tactics, consistent with this hypothesis. Positive-approaching tactics also appear more effective in regulating emotions than negative-receding tactics and thus may be more adaptive. We consider how context influences tactic use and discuss open questions about the hypothesis. With recent longitudinal evidence showing mixed patterns of emotional well-being in aging, the APT shift hypothesis can guide future investigation of within-person changes in ER behavior.

Background: Selective attention declines with age, due to age-related functional changes in dorsal anterior cingulate cortex (dACC). Real-time functional magnetic resonance imaging (rtfMRI) neurofeedback has been used in young adults to train volitional control of brain activity, including in dACC. Methods: For the first time, this study used rtfMRI neurofeedback to train 19 young and 27 older adults in volitional up- or down-regulation of bilateral dACC during a selective attention task. Results: Older participants in the up-regulation condition (experimental group) showed greater reward points and dACC BOLD signal across training sessions, reflective of neurofeedback training success; and faster reaction time and better response accuracy, suggesting behavioral benefits on selective attention. These effects were not observed for older participants in the down-regulation condition (inverse condition control group), supporting specificity of volitional dACC up-regulation training in older adults. These effects were, unexpectedly, also not observed for young participants in the up-regulation condition (age control group), perhaps due to a lack of motivation to continue the training. Conclusions: These findings provide promising first evidence of functional plasticity in dACC in late life via rtfMRI neurofeedback up-regulation training, enhancing selective attention, and demonstrate proof of concept of rtfMRI neurofeedback training in cognitive aging.

Oxytocin (OT) is a neuropeptide critically involved in social cognition and behavior. Intranasal administration of OT has modulatory effects on both brain and behavior, with potential for therapeutic benefit, especially in individuals with deficits in socioemotional functions. Intranasal OT effects have been well-investigated in younger adults as well as in a variety of clinical populations (e.g., autism, schizophrenia), but there is comparatively less investigation of its function in older adults. To foster more research on OT and aging, the following dataset was made publicly available, which includes data from generally healthy younger (n = 52; aged 18-31 years; 48% female) and older adults (n = 54; aged 63-81 years; 56% female) who self-administered a single dose (24 international units) of either intranasal OT or a placebo (with identical ingredients as the OT spray but without the synthetic OT; IND 100,860; NCT01823146). The study adopted a randomized, double-blind, between-subject design. The dataset consists of anatomical and functional resting-state neuroimaging scans acquired after nasal spray administration as well as study-specific phenotypic and demographic data. This dataset using both OT administration and neuroimaging is unique in its size and inclusion of both younger and older adults as well as women and men. This data has resulted in published work on OT modulation of cognition, behavior, and neural activation/connectivity. Open access to this data will provide the scientific community with the opportunity to investigate individual differences in the neurocognitive effects of single-dose OT in younger and older adults.

Increasing misinformation spread poses a threat to older adults but there is little research on older adults within the fake news literature. Embedded in the Changes in Integration for Social Decisions in Aging (CISDA) model, this study examined the role of (a) analytical reasoning; (b) affect; (c) news consumption frequency, and their interplay with (d) news content on news veracity detection in aging. Conducted during the early phase of the COVID-19 pandemic, the present study asked participants to view and evaluate COVID or non-COVID (i.e., everyday) news articles, followed by measures of analytical reasoning, affect, and news consumption frequency. News veracity detection was comparable between young and older adults. Additionally, fake news detection for non-COVID news was predicted by individual differences in analytic reasoning for both age groups. However, chronological age effects in fake news detection emerged within the older adult sample and interacted with the CISDA-derived components of analytical reasoning, affect, and news consumption frequency by news content. Collectively, these findings suggest that age-related vulnerabilities to deceptive news are only apparent in very old age. Our findings advance understanding of psychological mechanisms in news veracity detection in aging.

The roles of oxytocin (OT) and arginine-vasopressin (AVP) as crucial modulators of social cognition and related behaviours have been extensively addressed in the literature. The involvement of these neuropeptides in social cognition in ageing, however, and a potential mediating effect of basic cognitive capacities on this link, are not well understood. To fill these research gaps, this study assessed associations of plasma OT and AVP levels with dynamic emotion identification accuracy in generally healthy older men (aged 55–95 years) and probed the underlying roles of crystallized and fluid cognition in these associations. Higher plasma OT levels were associated with lower accuracy in dynamic emotion identification, with this negative relationship fully mediated by cognition. For plasma AVP levels, in contrast, there was no association with dynamic emotion identification accuracy. Integrated within existing theoretical accounts, results from this study advance understanding of the neuropeptide–social cognition link in ageing and support basic cognitive capacities as mediators in this association. This article is part of the theme issue ‘Interplays between oxytocin and other neuromodulators in shaping complex social behaviours’.

Increasing misinformation spread poses a threat to older adults but there is little research on older adults within the fake news literature. Embedded in the Changes in Integration for Social Decisions in Aging (CISDA) model, this study examined the role of (i) analytical reasoning; (ii) affect; (iii) news consumption frequency, and their interplay with (iv) news content on news veracity detection in aging. Conducted during the early phase of the COVID-19 pandemic, the current study asked participants to view and evaluate COVID or non-COVID (i.e., everyday) news articles, followed by measures of analytical reasoning, affect, and news consumption frequency. News veracity detection was comparable between young and older adults. Additionally, fake news detection for non-COVID news was predicted by individual differences in analytic reasoning for both age groups. However, chronological age effects in fake news detection emerged within the older adult sample and interacted with the CISDA-derived components of analytical reasoning, affect, and news consumption frequency by news content. Collectively, these findings suggest that age-related vulnerabilities to deceptive news are only apparent in very old age. Our findings advance understanding of psychological mechanisms in news veracity detection in aging.